A message from Mat Tucker, Group Recovery Manager
Coming to the end of an extremely challenging year for Auckland, we can all do with some hope moving into 2024. I wanted to share some positive progress that puts us in a good place heading into the New Year.
In Auckland, the storm impact was widespread – not just in one or two communities but right throughout communities from the top to the bottom of the region. The needs are very diverse – and the solutions are not easy given how built-up the urban areas are.
We are now halfway through fixing about 3,500 issues within our infrastructure, facilities and communities. There are some difficult projects remaining, but having interim fixes in place gives us time to deliver more resilient, long term solutions.
Home Categorisation
Now that we are a good way through our property assessments, with almost 1600 desktop and over 1000 site assessments done so far, we’re starting to deliver categorisations at a more consistent pace. So far we have confirmed well over 500 property categories, and we are now seeing more flood-related categorisations come through, right across Auckland. This reflects the fact that flood risk solutions are generally less clear-cut than landslip risks.
While we are working hard to complete our work as quickly as possible, we have had to manage expectations by clarifying that our categorisation programme will continue until March, and June for more complex cases. However, most will be completed sooner as we will continue to confirm categories on an ongoing basis, including this week.
In a significant development, we have just made our first official buyout offers to a handful of Category 3 property owners, and are hoping to have a few of these settled before Christmas. With over 60 properties at various stages of the buyout process, there will be more soon. This is in line with progress in the other storm affected regions.
While this won't feel like great news for those of you still waiting, these are very good signs that we are shifting up a gear heading into the New Year. This is largely because we’ve completed a massive amount of foundational work, from scratch, to enable the recovery programme. This includes securing a significant amount of funding, producing key policies and guidelines, and ensuring we have the people and resources we need to deliver this scheme.
Through the holiday period, especially leading up to Christmas, we want to remind you that there is good support available through our navigators, both for material and emotional/mental wellbeing needs. So if you are struggling, please get in touch - we have some navigators available over the break to help.
Mat Tucker